5 things you never needed to know about Pac-Man (along with coolest 3D drawing ever)

Pac-Man lives forever in this chalk drawing -- well, at least until it rains -- thanks to superstar artist Leon Keer. (Read his bio here; it's amazing.) If you want to see his masterpiece in person, you'll need a plane ticket to Venlo in the Netherlands. (But here are more photos.)

By the way, here are five things that maybe you didn't know about Pac-Man.

The name Pac-Man comes from the Japanese slang "paku-paku," a description of the sound the mouth makes when it opens and closes. It'd eventually be called Puck-Man, but was changed to Pac-Man in the U.S. to avoid people trying to cleverly change its name by vandalizing the letter "P."

It was released at a Japanese trade show in 1980 along with the soon-to-be-popular game Defender.

The game wasn't an instant success; in Japan, where it was born, it failed to inspire gamers who still clamored to play Space Invaders. But it would eventually score $2.5 billion in quarters by the 1990s, making it the one of the highest grossing video games of all time.

The maximum possible score of the game's original version is 3,333,360 points. A player in Hollywood, Fla., achieved the feat for the first time in 1999, taking about six hours to reach that score. The top speed record is 3 hours, 41 minutes, and 22 seconds.

Everyone knows that the first "sequel" to Pac-Man was Ms. Pac-Man. But "she" wasn't the only one. Other games include Pac-Man Plus, Jr. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man and Professor Pac-Man.

About this blog

Relive the '80s music, movies and culture with Tampa Bay Times correspondent Steve Spears. A teen during the greatest decade ever, Steve is obsessed with everything from Duran Duran to Journey, John Hughes to John Cusack, and parachute pants to big hair.